So I went to my first horse-back riding lesson today! Did I lose all of my skills from riding horses before? YES! I only ride for about 45 minutes and I am absolutely DED dead. The riding school that I will be attending is a military equitation training school, so all the personnel is military. It's very structured, but I don't like that under-rank soldiers do all of the cleaning and tacking up. I really like the get the horse reading myself.
I got there at 11 and started to ride at about 11:05 because they had already tacked up Mariposa (butterfly) for me, therefore, I didn't have to do anything but ride my butt off. At this school, we start out with a body warm-up for us, the rider. I stretched my neck, arms, and legs while Mariposa walked. Then we just got into basic flat work. Trotting is so much harder on a real sized horse. I am much more grateful for Tinker's easy gait now because Mariposa is big! With the added loss of balance caused by being out of shape, I really had to squeeze with my legs. My ankles hurt so much right now from trying to keep them down, unsuccessfully. I finally cantered a bit until we did some final balance activities.
However, during these activities, my host Aunt Mimi came running in. She was definitely the last person I thought I'd see there. My first thought was that Mama was doing some chores and she asked Mimi to pick me up, but when she started talking I knew she thought something was wrong!
Turns out, a conman had called the house and told Otilia (la doña) that Mama had been in a big accident and that we would have to pay something. I'm not exactly sure, but they were definitely trying to extort money from the family by scaring the crap out of us all. She called Mama, who was shopping with her phone in the car. Everyone freaked out and Mimi came to ask me if I'd seen Mama and if I knew where she was. I thought she had gone back to the house. Everything was perfectly fine though and nothing happened to Mama.
Stuff like that just happens in Lima. The are thieves and liars everywhere and they are scary!
Overall, I had a very good and interesting first lesson. The instructor probably thinks my family is crazy now, but it's ok. I can't wait to go back on Tuesday!
L
Ps. Pictures later, I wanted to save the crazy for a later date.
No comments:
Post a Comment